I started writing when I was sixteen, scribbling episodes of the Professionals in a notebook when my mum thought I was revising for my exams.
I loved writing because I could get involved in the stories I created. Doyle was my hero and I realised I could spend more time with my curly haired hero if I wrote my own stories about him.
I went from writing about TV characters to inventing my own, and wrote a couple of fantasy novels as a teenager because I had crushes on sword-wielding thieves rather than the blokes in Duran Duran or Aha.
The only career I wanted was one where I could dream up stories for a living, I was unusually confident about this working out, so I left school at sixteen and took part-time jobs to write novels and TV scripts. I had just enough encouragement from agents and BBC people to keep going, but when I saw an advert for a new degree at Bournemouth University in Scriptwriting for Film and TV I knew this was a great opportunity to leave home to learn the writer’s trade.
It almost worked out, my screenplays were well liked, and before I’d even left University I was heading to the BBC to meet producers and work on a one-off drama script. I was offered an option deal for a comedy about crisps (yes, crisps) I even co-wrote a screenplay for an independent filmmaker.
But deep down I wasn’t happy with my work, I knew my projects were flawed, there was always something missing. Maybe the structure wasn’t up to much, maybe the characters were weak? I had imagination, I knew I could write, but somehow I could never deliver a story that worked from the first page to the last.
I had a daughter, I learned to play poker and was good at the game, I got my first proper full-time job, then I split up with a long-term partner and some big life stuff happened… I had a career, friends, all the stuff I’d only ever written about before. Now it was all happening to me, and I was changing.
But the writing thing didn’t go away. I wrote my blogs, in an obsessive, caring-too-much-about it way. Blogs that changed my life as it happens.
My first blog was Ace High, a blog I used to talk myself into leaving my partner, it took a while before I risked a life as a single mum, daring to leave a wealthy boyfriend who was still my best friend.
Happy, silly, (magic) fun stuff, was a blog about my new life as a single mum, a life of adventure as a hero of Tooting Bec, where I found magic in nothing-special things, and made a challenge of sticking stickers on tube station posters.
I finished writing this blog when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. I moved to Whitstable when my baby was just a week old, and missed work and London. I’ve struggled to settle here, truth be told. So I started writing ‘not writing’. A sad little blog where I miserably claimed I was writing about not writing.
And here we are now.
I had a bee in my bonnet about bees, remember that? And as I started to write screenplays again, after a decade away from this first love, I realised what the silly bee thing was all about.
It probably sounds like nonsense to most, but my favourite screenwriting book had a passage about bees flying at windows while there was an unnoticed open window just a few inches away.
When I wrote screenplays years ago, I never quite got the story right. Now I think I know what stories mean, all the best screenwriting books (including the bee one) tell you that a story is about a hero changing. I think I might be better at the story writing lark these days, because I get that, and I feel it. I’ve lived through kids, careers, break-ups, magic tube stations, bees in my bonnet… I’ve changed, and come back stronger.
So I’m a bee flying out of the open window, writing screenplays and loving it.
I’m hoping this third act as a screenwriter is a success, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s not because I know how lucky I am to have found something I enjoy. It’s rather nice to close this blog by saying ‘ I am writing’.
I may start a new blog about my adventures as a would-be screenwriter, I’d like to call it ‘The cat and the bee’. The cat because of my new favourite screenwriting book, and the bee… Well you know that one.
It might be nice to write a first post that mentions that I’m longlisted in the BBC Drama Writer’s Academy, and shortlisted in the Euroscript Screen Story competition.
It’s been a good week for my writing, and I’m happy. So goodbye ’not writing’ and hello to the cat and the bee.
